


Things I Always Meant to Say

by Raehimura



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Baze Left, Can Chirrut Forgive Him?, M/M, Separations, Space Husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 13:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12654249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raehimura/pseuds/Raehimura
Summary: There was so much to say — so much he had always wanted to say that he had feared he’d never have the chance to. Was two years apart long enough to change things between them?





	Things I Always Meant to Say

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on a prompt I got on Tumblr from @seaofolives: "things you always meant to say... for baze and chirrut pls! ❤️" Thanks!

“Chirrut? It’s me.”

When the comm alerted him of an incoming call, Chirrut knew who it was on the other side of the signal. There was no reason for it to be him: He hadn’t heard from him in two years, since the day he left Jedha. He didn’t even know what side of the galaxy he was on. But he knew who was calling before the line crackled to life.

“Chirrut?”

_Baze._ His voice was rougher, strained and weary in a way it hadn’t been even after the fall of the Temple. But Chirrut heard him in it anyway. Chirrut knew no other sound so well, except maybe the song of the kyber.

“Chirrut, I … I miss you.”

It was barely a whisper, jagged as a ruined piece of debris. Not from embarrassment, but from pain. Shame. Fear. 

“I —”

His thin voice finally collapsed, and if he wanted to say more, he got nothing out. The comm signal hummed softly. 

Chirrut breathed, deep and steady. There was so much to say — so much he had always wanted to say, so much he had feared he’d never have the chance to say.

He wanted to say, _I miss you too._

Like a missing limb. Like a young man losing his sight, becoming a stranger in familiar halls. Like a faith, a family, a way of life scattered in the wake of an authoritarian machine.

Like a broken vow.

When Baze left Jedha, Chirrut could not know if they would ever meet again. He could trust in the plan of the Force, follow its guidance as he had always done. He could pray for the Force to guide Baze onto the right path, to soothe his snarling heart. But he had to learn to live each day with the absence of Baze, as much a presence at his shoulder as the man had always been.

They were a binary star system, each a part of the other, holding each other steady by holding each other close. Chirrut remained whole in the Force, but he would never find balance without Baze.

He wanted to say,  _You’re beautiful._

Baze would never take the compliment. They were children when they first met, but the years passed quickly. Chirrut blossomed: His skinny body hardened to whipcord muscles, his sun-bright grins given easily. People were drawn to him, and he had no shame about enjoying it.

He flirted as easily as he breathed.

Baze grew too. He caught up to Chirrut’s height quickly and packed on his share of hard-earned muscles. But where Chirrut was the narrow, striking strength of the staff, Baze was the solid heavy thud of a fist.

He was just as fast, just as controlled, just as graceful as the best of them. But before long, he took up more space than he knew what to do with and intimidated just by existing. 

Once, when they first grew old enough to examine their bodies through others’ eyes, Baze had described his looks as “plain.” Chirrut had disagreed, teasing him with compliments until he was red and stuttering, and then the two of them had laughed it off. Or at least, Chirrut had. He couldn’t know how deeply that belief had burrowed, how much it effected Baze, until years later when they finally got together.

Baze looked at Chirrut, touched him, like the Force itself shone in his features. But he would hear nothing about his own looks. He clammed up, pushed away, brushed off any explicit praise for his appearance. Chirrut found other ways to show him, and Baze came to trust that Chirrut found him beautiful, desired him, loved him.

Still, the bruise ran deep. In the years of their separation, Chirrut found himself wishing he had dared to prod it more.

He wanted to say, _Finally. What took you so long?_

A jibe. A joke, to put them both at ease? But Baze Malbus had always needed comfort more than humor.

He wanted to say,  _You’re the reason I’m still here._

When he lost his sight, angry and scared and ready to give up, Baze sat with him for days, a silent comforting presence, even when Chirrut snapped and railed, spitting poison and wiping angrily at weeping eyes. Then, finally, when Chirrut’s anger had quieted to fathomless grief, Baze cupped his face and gently cleaned the last of the gummy residue from his cheeks. And Baze, who once had a panic attack when he accidentally broke the Temple’s rule against taking scrolls from the archive, snuck Chirrut down to the quiet chill of the kyber pools to show him he hadn’t lost what truly matters. 

Chirrut never told him how close he came to leaving the temple. Never told him that was the second time he convinced him to stay.

He was sure Baze didn’t remember the first time. They were both very young, and Baze himself had only been at the Temple for a year. Chirrut was on his second day in Jedha and already miserable.

He had been chosen from among the children in his remote village for his “great potential” — for his quick body and even quicker mind. The acolytes at the lesser temple had barely spent a week evaluating him before he was sent on to the main temple. All in all, it had been a whirlwind change to everything he had ever known.

Which may have been fine for an irrepressible and flexible child like him, but he had found little comfort so far in the towering walls of the Temple and the stern faces of the elders. The elder in charge of corralling the youngest students was unimpressed with his exuberant grins and loud laughter, and the other novitiates were too nervous to make good company. He was altogether unsure he was cut out for life as a monk, great potential or no. 

So the afternoon of his second day in NiJedha, he slipped away from his lessons to watch a group of older students practicing for their sixth duan. Their movements were fluid, fast and backed with power. They seemed more like a force of nature, like the wind, than regular people not so much older than himself. He had watched in wide-eyed wonder until they finished, and then found a secluded corner of the yard to attempt to copy what he’d seen.

He had nowhere near their strength or control, but he found that with a little practice, he could push his body through some of the less complicated forms. Warming with excitement and confidence, he moved faster — too fast, it turned out. Trying to come out of a complicated kick, his limbs entangled and he tumbled sideways. Right into a larger boy who was passing by.

The boy just managed to keep them both upright, catching Chirrut against his broader chest with an ooph. When Chirrut sorted his limbs and managed to stand back, stuck between offering a solemn apology and smoothing things over with his trademark grin, the other boy just chuckled.

“There’s a reason we have practice yards you know,” he said, not unkind. “But that was pretty impressive for a novitiate. What’s your name?”

“Chirrut,” he offered without hesitation, peering up into dark eyes. “And I think you might be the only one here to find me the least bit impressive.”

Baze smiled and, though his features originally seemed so intimidating, it lit up his face. “It can feel like that at the beginning. But I promise it gets better. There’s no place I’d rather be than here at the Temple.”

Chirrut was smiling, despite himself, his self-pitying mood already lifting. It hadn’t suited him anyway.

“Now I think you have a class to get back to,” the boy continued, mock stern, “or Elder Yasha will tan both our hides.”

Chirrut let the other boy shoo him back in the direction of his class, but stopped a few paces away to grin and call back, “What’s your name?”

He could have sworn the boy actually blushed. “You can call me Baze.”

Chirrut thought he could manage to be patient. With the Temple, with the elders, with his training. With everything except befriending Baze. 

So he stayed.

And then, decades later when it came time, he could offer no comfort to Baze to convince him to stay.

He wanted to say, _I forgive you for leaving. I forgave you before you ever left. But I missed you every day._

He wanted to say, _I understand why you had to leave. How much pain you were in._

He wanted to say, _It wasn’t weakness._  

_You were always the stronger of us, though you never believed it._

So many things to say, all clamoring together for release against the pressure of two years of silence. But when Chirrut opened his mouth, he knew exactly what he needed to say most.

“I have never stopped loving you,” he said simply, honestly, as easy as it had always been.

Then, over the quiet sob that broke the static: “Come home.”


End file.
